Posts from August 5th, 2007

Sunday, 5 August 2007

Link of the Month: Physorg This is my favorite website to get news about what’s happening in the fast-paced, exciting world of science. Yes, I am a nerd. Why do you ask?

DVD of the Month:Hot Fuzz Still one of my favorite movies of the year. Shockingly funny and with a pitch-perfect third act. Read my review!

Album of the Month: Mika: Life in Cartoon Motion Born in Beiruit, Mika grew up listening to a lot of Queen, a whole lot of Supertramp, some Elton John, some Rufus Wainright, and a li’l bit of Prince. And you can tell. His music is bright, free-wheeling, piano-driven, falsetto-sung music, the kind that people haven’t made since the heyday of classic rock in the 70s. Infectiously catchy. My favorite song on the album is “Stuck in the Middle.”

Yesterday (Saturday) was an… interesting episode of Fools Play Improv. Mike & I started out by doing World in a Box, but during the 2nd scene a guy wearing a tie stormed in and demanded to know what we were all doing here, as Studio 321 had reverted to the city on Aug 1st and everyone was supposed to be out by now! This city government agent even called the cops on me and Mike, so we got out of there.

After we left the apprentices confronted the government agent and came to learn that the reason the gubment wanted us all out was because a private organization had donated a tonne of money to expand the Oly waterfront. Who was the private organization? Well, it turned out to be the Whales, who went to the theater to make sure everything went okay with kicking us out and all.

The Apprentices challenged the Whales: if the Apprentices could do better improv scenes than the Whales, then the Whales would leave Studio 321 alone. The whales accepted, but named the government agent as the judge! However, the apprentices held their own, and the stone-faced judge (he didn’t laugh—not once) declared after four scenes that the Apprentices had won!

The Whales, however, had the last laugh. They withdrew their entire donation to the Waterfront project. The city had already allocated substantial resources to the project and now they were screwed because they didn’t have enough money to pay for the work already done! The city would have to raze Studio 321 immediately and sell the land in order to raise the needed capital. The Apprentices cursed his icy heart—after all, he hadn’t laughed once during the whole show (even though he claimed to find some of the scenes funny).

The agent explained that he had some sort of disorder that didn’t allow him to cry at all. Even when he was a kid! The other kids would make fun of him and laugh at him, and he would be really upset. But not because the kids were laughing at him, but because he couldn’t laugh along with them!

So the Apprentices got him to agree that if they could somehow get him to laugh he would push back the bulldozer date. But how could they get him to laugh? He’d just sat through a whole show of their comedy without laughing. Wait a minute! He hadn’t seen the Fools perform yet, and they’re way funnier than the Apprentices!

So Jake called Mike and me while we were at Pizza Hut, filling ourselves with food until we couldn’t feel our sorrows anymore. But when we heard the plan we rushed back to Studio 321 and confronted the gubment agent. We got him to agree that for every time we got him to laugh he’d postpone the bulldozer to the first of the next month. Mike & I settled on me doing the “Guy Who Can’t Wink” routine, and I actually got him to laugh four times, pushing the bulldozer date all the way back to November 1st! Then as I shook the government agent’s hand I not-winked at him again, forcing him to push the date back to December 1st! Hooray! Now we have Studio 321 until December 1st! That should be plenny o’ time to find a new venue.

Mike & I decided to celebrate by doing a big scene with the apprentices. The government agent said, “Oh, I see, just with them, huh?” and kept on insinuating that he wanted to join the scene, too. So after asking the audience if it was okay we invited him to join the scene as well, and we did a big final scene that had some parts done as homage to The Last Starfighter.